There have been several diaries on what the Democratic party can do to win back middle America (or to be more precise, bring those few percentage points of voters to win swing states).
Clearly gun control has already been abandoned, it seems that many folks think the way to win swing voters is to moderate the Democratic stance on gay rights and abortion.
The problem is, on guns, gays and abortion, the Democratic party will never be able to outflank the Republicans. However, the Dems could outflank the GOP on the issue of immigration.
The dirty little secret of immigration is that allowing illegal aliens to stay is supported by the Republicans because it lowers the wage scale. Over the last 30 years, the wages of high school dropout and graduates who don't go on to college has fallen in real terms. There are several reasons for this, but a big one is that since there are immigrants willing to work at lower end jobs even at minimum wage, there is no pressure on employers to increase the wages on lower end jobs.
The late Barbara Jordan endorsed tougher immigration laws, and I think this is a stance that may show working class Americans that the Democrats will put their interests in front of corporate interests.
http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/uscir/032995.html
What's surprising is that Americans of all ethnicities, including Hispanics (and I'm one myself) support cracking down on illegal immigration. When politicians propose amnesty for aliens (which is what Bush's guest worker plan amounts to, as long as their American employer deign to keep their foreign workers here), it sends the messsage, in America, if you play by the rules and obey the law, you're a sucker.
I would note that "aliens take the jobs American don't want" is a canard. They take jobs at THAT WAGE LEVEL that Americans don't want. If they increased the wages, you'd find plenty of Americans willing to take those jobs